The Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) today dismissed as "consuelo de bobo" (mock consolation) Benigno Aquino's promise of 40,000 new jobs in the next three years with $2.4 billion in projected new US investments from his week-long US trip.

Said the CPP, "This is a drop in the ocean of unemployment drowning the Philippine economy. Consider that just last March, some 30% of more than half a million new college graduates, a bigger number of high school graduates and as many dropouts have ended up unemployed."

"Close to half of the Philippine labor force of 39 million are either unemployed or seeking additional employment," the CPP added.

"Aquino enticed US companies to invest in the Philippines promising them higher returns due to cheap Filipino labor," said the CPP.

"As it is, the current minimum wage rates are hardly one-fourth of what is needed for a family to live decently. Philippine labor is already one of the cheapest in Asia. With its thrust to keep wages low in order to attract more foreign investments, the puppet Aquino regime will surely just keep rejecting the workers' just demands for wage hikes."

"In giving highest premium to US and other foreign investments in the Philippines, and offering more tax and other incentives under the banner of its Private-Public Partnership Program, the US-Aquino regime is exposing its bankrupt pro-imperialist neoliberal economic policies that only keeps worsening the economic backwardness and massive unemployment in the Philippines," said the CPP.

"The Aquino regime is showing itself to be no different from the past puppet regimes in terms of addressing the economic crisis and unemployment problem," added the CPP. "Successive puppet regimes have all failed in addressing the unemployment problem through the export of labor and opening up the economy all the more to foreign investors."

"Like the past puppet regimes, the Aquino regime shows no interest in building national industry, implementing land reform and raising agricultural production which are key measures to generate much-needed employment," said the CPP.